


L'Ondine et le Diable

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume III [3]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Consensual Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gloves, M/M, Parrot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:13:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The intervening years move along, as Athos and Aramis navigate the waters of intrigue, the Loire, and their changing friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneforAll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneforAll/gifts).



> We feel it is fair to warn you that there will be het, although our Audience doesn't strike us as the type to shy away from such things!

_**England, July 1642** _  
_To: le comte de La Fère, Château Bragelonne, Blois_  
_From: l’abbé d’Herblay_  
_Fulham Palace, Middlesex_

My dear friend,

It has been much too long since I last inquired after the health of your noble self, and of that Garden of Eden that you have created in the hidden valley of the Loire. Have you had opportunity to indulge yourself this summer by dipping into the waters of this capricious yet charming river? I remember from days of yore that you always enjoyed a vigorous swim – albeit in salt rather than sweet waters, if memory does not deceive me.

As for me – what can I tell you? _Oro et laboro_ , my dear friend, following diligently St. Benedict’s rule in the eternal and humble hope that _Deus adest sine mora_. I go where my superiors send me. Still, my sojourn in Flanders has come to an end, and it appears that I will soon be free of those duties that have kept me tethered to the shores of Albion of late. I am therefore contemplating availing myself of your generous invitation that you reiterated last time we parted. You always reproach me for not appreciating the “bucolic charm” of your gardens, but rest assured, my dear comte: like yourself, I have the greatest esteem for beauty. The sight of your roses and peonies (which, I believe, you grow in honour of your Father?) gives me great pleasure, even if I never quite grasped the fascination some men have with plucking them. Then again, should you ever choose to send me a bulb or bouquet from your private garden, as I believe you once did, I shall receive it with delight. (But please, I beg of you, do not let it be a hyacinth. I do not care for receiving a poisonous souvenir from your hands ~~again~~.)

Here in London, I believe, an era is drawing to a close. His Grace the Bishop Juxon, whose hospitality I enjoy, has been favourably inclined to the overtures of goodwill I had been despatched to deliver. However, the Society of Jesus has never gained a strong foothold in England, and in the present austere climate, their mission has become more impossible than ever. The daughter of Henry IV had prolonged her stay in The Hague, where she went in February to raise money for her husband the king’s cause, and her return is now more than unlikely. The tension is great, you see men with drawn, sallow faces and hair shorn as short as that of plague victims on every corner following the call to arms with a fierce, almost ecstatic joy that does not befit the sombre Puritan. And it won’t be long ere the Royal standard will be raised on the other side of the debate. My presence is hence no longer required, for of what use would I be? I, a poor abbé, a beggar, an unknown, who finds himself ill-placed in the world.

I shall therefore soon embark on a voyage that will carry me back to familiar shores. The prospect of the sea does not fill me with pleasure, as you can imagine. What do you think, comte: should I ride out to the embankment of the Thames one night to seek divine solace and guidance? For where if not beneath the star-strewn sky can one commune with Him who pilots the ships across open waters? (I might have to return on foot, rendered even more modest and humble by my divine communion, but such sacrifices must be made.)

I must conclude, for the Bishop’s household keeps regular hours and mealtimes are taken seriously. Expect to see me soon and, as I hope, with the open arms of undying friendship and regard.

Yours, faithfully, Abbé R. d’Herblay

P.S. Lord de Winter sends his regards. I saw his Lordship but briefly, and we never mentioned _her_ , but I know that the sight of me reminded him of what passed in the same ways that the sight of him reminded me. I believe you _are_ right after all and that the matter has not yet been concluded. Let us pray that this time round conclusion will be final.

***

**Paris, September 1642**

“His Eminence is looking very pale.”

A frisson ran through the group of men amidst whom the remark had originated, but I didn’t look up from the notes I was taking on behalf of my superiors. My services as secretary and record-keeper were highly valued, for, as I had often been told, I had the uncanny knack of hearing more and comprehending more than any other man who would find himself in the same position. I had been granted access to the cardinal’s audience room by attaching myself unobtrusively to the retinue of the Italian upstart, who had not given me a second glance or thought. Clerks and secretaries were placed at the desks by the walls; I had humbly left them the comfortable seats and positioned myself in the window enclosure, hunched awkwardly over the windowsill with my pen poised. Sunlight streamed into the chamber; where it hit my black cassock, its golden rays got soaked up and rendered black, like fingers stained with soot. On the other side, my shadow stretched and spread. Its tendrils wandered like moving fingers towards his Eminence, who perched rigid in his chair, held upright by sheer willpower. A fever shook him, as it so often did in those days, and his brow was slick with perspiration. He had been bled not long ago – that very morning perhaps. I could sense his veins slowly, painfully filling with blood again, and my loins tingled as I imagined his heart pump desperately to restore his blood vessels to their tumescent state.

That man, whose virility had called out to me not fifteen years ago, was withering before our very eyes, and my fangs had not even pierced his skin. A part of me regretted that I had never sampled his vitality, which at its height had been formidable. Now, he was weak, while I brimmed over with the lifeforce of a dozen powerful men. He had not recognised me; perhaps he didn’t even remember me - the poor, obscure musketeer of yore who was now the obscure, black-clad abbé. My French name meant nothing at the Maison du Roi; my face, which was the same as it had been all those years ago, could not belong to the same man.

I turned my head and looked straight at his Eminence, who coughed into his handkerchief. My shadow, elongated by the rays of the evening sun, glided over the cardinal’s gaunt features like a gauzy veil. He had been ailing for a long time, and the sicker he got, the louder the steps of Death reverberated in the darkest hours of the night, the more often he found himself in my company. For many affairs had to be arranged before his departure from this world, and his audience room teemed with clergy and clerks.

I twirled my pen between my fingers and watched its shadow stroke over Richelieu’s shrunken cheek like the wing of a bird of prey. Who would his successor be? The king’s power had increased in the recent years – not least thanks to the victory at La Rochelle and because of his admittedly intelligent approach to the colonisation of New France, which was largely administered by the Society of Jesus. With Richelieu gone, the new minister would have to fill the vacuum of power, lest the king filled it himself.

 _Who would it be_?

The whispers rose and fell in a susurrating cacophony. Names buoyed to the surface, and I committed them to memory without writing them down.

A figure by his Eminence’s chair caught my attention. It was a man of fifty-five to sixty years of age, but still possessed of the firm, supple slimness of youth and with a good carriage. His haughty, stern countenance his black and piercing eyes, his pale complexion, his strongly-marked nose, and his black and well-shaped moustache – all his features, in short, indicated a man of high birth and of a proud and commanding temper. He was looking at me blatantly from across the room, and when our eyes met, he inclined his head in a gesture of recognition. A faint scar on his cheek, such as would be left by a grazing ball, told me who that man was.

The demon. The evil genius. The fiend risen from the deepest pits of Hell. The fire-breathing dragon. In short: the man of Meung. He who had swooped in like a magnificent bat whenever a misfortune had befallen the Gascon.

I smiled and inclined my head in a brief salute, and he broke loose from the huddle of men surrounding the cardinal and strode over to me. I rose to my feet.

“I was not mistaken, then,” he said, with a courteous bow. “We have met before, Monsieur?”

I calculated briefly. For a sinister Adversary, Destroyer of Worlds, he had very pleasant manners and voice. His hair was beautifully curled, his hands were pale and well-groomed and his shoes were highly polished.

“I believe so,” I said. “But that was a long time ago. Both our appearances have changed.” I smiled at him with all my teeth and waited for the words to sink in. “The count de Rochefort, if I’m not mistaken?”

He bowed again and, studying my face closely, said: “Indeed. But forgive me, Monsieur – I appear to be misremembering your name.”

Ever since I had decided to return to Paris, I had been preparing myself for this eventuality. Sooner or later, I would meet people who had known me as a young man. I had contemplated the idea of assuming a new identity and putting my resemblance to the musketeer Aramis down to coincidence. That stratagem, however, came with a considerable downside: if I kept pretending to be a novice of twenty-two years old, I would never be able to climb the ladder of power. I had therefore decided to keep my name and history and merely alter my age.

“The Abbé d’Herblay,” I bowed, and, at the sight of his blank look, added with a smile: “I don’t blame you, count. You knew me under a different name. But,” I continued, affecting a well-practised hesitation, “it was my nom de guerre that I have now shed like I have shed my former life.”

The fearsome Lord of Darkness smiled a charming smile. “Far be it from me to pry into another man’s affairs.” We both smiled now, for it was no secret that the count de Rochefort had been one of the cardinal’s most resourceful spies. “If you say nom de _guerre_ , Monsieur l’abbé, I assume that it was not one you wore as a man of the church?”

“I was a musketeer when we first met.”

“Ah!” He stared at me, hard, as if he was trying to read my very soul. “Yes, I believe I know now where I saw you.”

“You came to arrest a friend of mine.”

“Monsieur d’Artagnan!” he exclaimed. “An excellent fellow, and a dear friend of mine.”

“Indeed!” For the first time, Rochefort’s words had taken me by surprise. Then again – knowing the Gascon’s wild and veering flights of fancy, it was probably no surprise that he had changed his opinion about his deadly enemy and ‘evil genius’ so radically. “I remember the days when all he could speak of was piercing your heart with his sword, Monsieur le comte.”

“And so he tried,” the scar-faced villain said charmingly. “But after a few attempts to take each other’s lives, of which I still bear the scars, we decided it was a much better idea to bundle our forces, rather than wear each other down in duels.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Is Monsieur d’Artagnan working for his Eminence now? Last I heard was that he had been made lieutenant of the musketeers.”

“Your information is quite correct, Monsieur l’abbé.”

“Are you working for the king then, count?” I smiled.

“Aren’t we all?” he smiled back. “We are working for the good of France, are we not?”

“Indeed we are.” I glanced over his shoulder, at the sick old man who held the fate of France in the palm of his hand, and shifted slightly, watching my shadow creep up the side of his face. “The good of France is my biggest concern, always. If only,” I was watching his face, his eyes, very closely as I spoke, “if only one knew for certain what _the best_ is. In the end,” I added, mindful of my role as man of the robe, “we are all in God’s hands.”

“I believe it is obvious what would _not_ be in the best interest of France.” Rochefort’s eyes flickered for a moment towards the group of Mazarin’s retinue, and I glanced at them as well. It was a fleeting moment, and I believe he rued that lapse instantly, for he frowned at me as if attempting to ascertain how much I had guessed and how dangerous a nuisance I might become.

I smiled at him again – this time with unaffected sincerity. “You and I had never any differences to settle, Monsieur le comte, and I believe that now our interests may have aligned themselves,” I said. “Tell me, Monsieur – is a duel imperative for making your closer acquaintance? For as you may imagine, my robe generally prevents me from indulging in such exercises. However, for the pleasure of unreserved conversation with you, I would exchange it for the attire of a cavalier one last time and meet you, sword in hand, behind the Luxembourg.”

Rochefort laughed and, beckoning a lackey over, picked from his tray two glasses with wine and handed one to me. “I am convinced that we would give each other a lot of pleasure,” he purred. “But rest assured, Monsieur l’abbé – I have the greatest respect for your robe and I believe in your honour as a gentleman. You are not,” his gaze trailed to Mazarin’s group again, this time slowly, blatantly, “an upstart. Nor do you love them.”

“Indeed I do not.”

“Well then,” the diabolical rogue clinked his glass against mine. “I dare say our interests _are_ aligned.”

***

**Paris, July 1643**

Fifteen years had passed since I had been to Paris, almost to the day. I stood at Place Saint-Sulpice, mere steps away from my old apartment on rue Ferou, and listened to the ringing of the bells. Paris was in the throes of summer again. How summers pained me back in those days. Those days that I supposed I should refer to as “of my youth.” How foolish this was! I should have taken more pains to obscure my appearance, or to make myself look older. Even a few decades ago, I would have taken great care not to come back to the same place during an average human’s lifetime. Now, here I was, on my way to rue Saint-Dominique, looking the same as I ever did.

Better, even, come to think of it.

 _A certain person would like it to be known to you that she has returned from exile,_ the note had said. It was time for me to keep my promise. Did she really want the parrot back? No, I wasn’t naive enough to believe that. Nevertheless, Segundo was safely stashed away in his silver cage, which Grimaud carried behind me, muttering to himself. She had exacted a promise from me in Roche-L’Abeille, and I wasn’t one to go back on my word.

I stood at the doors of Hôtel de Luynes, studying its arms.

“Turn back, Kyrios. That way lies nymph vagina and damnation,” the Grigori admonished before I laughed and rang the doorbell.

She had taken up residence in her first husband’s home, where everyone still treated her as Mistress. She may have been a woman, but Marie de Rohan lorded over her subjects almost as surely as my Father over Olympus.

We ascended the front steps and asked that the liveried footman announce to the duchess de Chevreuse that the comte de La Fère was requesting an audience. The footman returned with a profound bow and requested that I follow him inside the apartments. I took the cage from Grimaud’s hand and dismissed him.

“Are you certain, my lord?” he asked, frown deepening.

“Don’t worry, Grimaud. I won’t trip and fall,” I said, my meaning made clear by the tone of my voice.

After traversing a long succession of apartments, we paused at a closed door. The footman announced me; I went inside.

What did I expect to see? I suppose I expected to find a woman in her forties, past the blossoms of her youth, which I remembered had been grand. A woman who had returned to Paris like a conquering Queen after Richelieu’s death only to find that her best friend - the actual Queen - now turned her eyes to a man beneath herself, beneath Marie’s contempt even. _The Italian upstart, the miser, the clown_ , as Aramis had called him. The day and star of Marie de Rohan surely was setting on the wily nymph and other stars were rising in the new King’s court. Her younger cousin, the newly married duchess de Longueville, for example, or as I liked to call her - the Bourbon nymph. They were all the same, these French _rusalki_. Long necked, blond-braided, a bit fishy.

No, Marie de Rohan was no longer my rival. (Besides, to have rivals, one must first have equals.) But why did she want me to think of her as a friend?

Her back had been to me when I entered her little boudoir. She had been standing by the window which looked upon the garden. A heady scent of roses permeated her room and I noticed a bouquet upon her dressing table, the flowers of which matched those embroidered upon the blue damask that hung along the walls.

She turned to me, and I was dazzled. There was no sign of the woman I had expected in the room. Instead, I was before a goddess, who though bound in a mortal coil still carried her divinity with her with grace and perseverance. She smiled and stretched her beautiful hands towards me.

“Count!”

“Madame,” I bowed deeply, taking one of her hands in mine and gently pressing my lips to the alabaster skin. Her fingers pressed mine for a fleeting moment and I felt a fluttering within my chest. That way lay danger.

“I am not home for anyone,” she told the footman, who had retreated silently and without any further concern. “Athos,” she turned back towards me and said my name. It had been a long time since anyone had said my name the way she did, and not only because she had said it in Greek. “You are a man who keeps his promises. Am I to understand you’ve come to return my bird?”

Her words and her voice at last brought me from my reverie of admiration and I uncovered the cage. From the inside, Segundo gave me a dirty look. No doubt he thought I was betraying him.

The nymph clapped her hands together in an outburst of glee. “Oh, he is delightful! May I hold him?”

“Madame, he is as much yours as mine.”

She reached into the cage and carried the parrot out on the perch of her graceful arm.

“Say hello, Segundo,” I spoke casually.

“Hello Rohan Nymph,” the parrot intoned, almost formally. I beamed with paternal pride.

She broke out into a fit of girlish giggles. “You rascal!” she spoke, seemingly addressing the parrot. “Is that any way to speak to a lady?”

“I love Aramis,” the parrot replied.

“Ah, yes, well who wouldn’t?” Marie sighed demonstratively, still speaking towards the parrot on her arm. “I hear he ended badly, incidentally?” Her charming head turned towards me and her cerulean eyes glowed like aquamarine gems.

“Indeed, Madame. He has become an abbé.”

“Ah! What a loss to the world!”

“It would be, Madame, were it truly so. Aramis stays as close to the cloisters as a bat to its cave once the sun goes down.”

She laughed again. “Oh, my dear count, I have not forgotten how witty you are from our last meeting.”

“You exaggerate, Madame,” I bowed briefly again. “But I am happy if my speech can bring you even meager entertainment.”

She gave me a long and thoughtful look and then placed Segundo back into his cage, upon which he immediately protested by invoking Hades’ balls. We both laughed. Then, an invisible veil settled over us during which time neither one of us spoke, only took in each other’s faces, as if attempting to make a difficult decision. _I should go_ , I thought.

“You should sit,” she said.

I obeyed.

She sank down onto the sofa next me, her skirts billowed and brushed against my knees. My hand caught against the hilt of my sword and then I moved ever so slightly further away from her.

“Aramis loved you so much,” she sighed, propping her head up with her elegant hand. Her tresses were piled in intricate braids at the top of her head, making her long neck look even more swanlike. I was too caught up in studying her, the way her lips moved as she spoke, the way earrings dangled from her delicate earlobes, to hear what she was saying. “Rumor is, count, that you broke his heart.”

“ _I_ , Madame?” My eyes opened wide to match my lips. “Well, that is just typical hypocrisy of the Catholic clergy for you.”

“Oh no, sir, it wasn’t Aramis who said so. He was always too proud, you know.”

“I know.”

It felt strange, speaking to her about Aramis this way. I tore my eyes away from her face and focused them on my own hands. She had found him on the shores of Turkey and she had loved him. I was gone and she had taken care of him. And instead of thanking her, I had spent decades hating her and cursing her name when I should have joined Aramis in protecting her.

“Madame, I owe you an apology,” I spoke, afraid to look her in the eyes again. “I feel I had been unjust to you in the past. And, moreover, ungentlemanly during our last meeting.”

“It isn’t your apology I wanted, count, although I appreciate the sentiment,” she said, playing with a lock of her hair.

“Then, how may I serve you, Madame?”

The way she looked at me, for a moment I thought she would devour me. And then, she inched closer to me on the couch and I saw her breasts heave gently beneath the tight bodice of her dress. I breathed in; I breathed out. Nothing exists except that our mind makes it so.

“Tell me about the curse. And be precise. Use the exact words that Hera used.”

The look I gave her must have been rather comical because she broke out into peals of giggles again.

“Marie..,” I spoke, using her name for the first time. “Are you trying to kill me? Because you’re going about it all wrong.”

“I’m trying to find a loophole, my darling,” she said almost coyly. Her lips pursed into the semblance of a kiss. “You should know better than anyone, there’s always a loophole. Trust me, Athos. We women and goddesses understand such things. And not all of us are trying to cause you pain.”

“What _are_ you trying to cause me?”

Her eyes clouded over for a moment and she leaned in closer so that I could inhale her expensive perfume. Despite my better judgment, I leaned in.

“I am only interested in pleasure,” she whispered. “I look at you, and I think we could bring each other a lot of pleasure. If we’re careful and unafraid.”

“Madame,” I whispered back, unable to take my eyes off her lips, “I am always careful, but I am seldom unafraid.”

“Exact. Words. Athos.”

I spoke them to her, using the same words and the same language that Hera had used when she had initially condemned me to eternal life.

“That is good,” the nymph said, her head almost touching my own. “I shall think on it. Please, do come back tomorrow.”

I did not speak. Inside the confines of my breeches, my cock gave a pained twitch. It was as if a tiny Grimaud had been sitting on my shoulder whispering into my ear what a dangerous game I was playing here.

“As you wish, Madame,” I said, rising off the sofa and bowing towards her again.

“Wait,” she rose, her skirts flapping behind her and the aroma of her perfume following her sudden movement. “If I find a way…” She hesitated. I had not known Marie de Rohan to be one for hesitation. “Do you… do you want me to find a way?” She suddenly seemed very young and even more beautiful for her onset of doubt. “Because you should only return if you want to,” she added quickly, brushing a stray lock off her forehead.

I picked up her hand in mine and brought it to my lips again. What was a woman’s touch? I had kissed women’s hands before, I had kissed this very hand before. Would another kiss doom me?

“Marie,” I sighed, “I will be here tomorrow.”

“And keep the bird!” she exclaimed, as if suddenly remembering the true purpose of my visit. “He is much better suited to your lifestyle, I think, than to mine. I travel so much!”

***

After I left Marie’s abode, I spent the evening in the company of the chevalier de Rochefort, who had struck me just as Aramis had described him when we last met: charming as the devil himself, and rather robust for a man his age.

“Count, you are remarkably well preserved,” he said to me, over a glass of Beaujolais that he had had imported directly from the Rhône. The old Cardinal’s equerry was clearly a man of taste. “What is your secret? Have you discovered the fountain of youth?”

“I have given up drink,” I responded and observed his eyes glitter with amusement. For a man in Richelieu’s service for so long, I would have been surprised if he had never found himself at close quarters with some supernatural being or another. He was fearless and plain in his speech, and I did not wish to offend him by having to exchange lies over pleasantries.

He was conspiring with the duc de Beaufort and an entire cabal of nobles against the Italian _stronzo_ , an undertaking for which I plainly told him that I admired his energy, while exhibiting some concern for his well-being. We parted as friends, if not as co-conspirators. I did, however, admonish him that I had reasons for our mutual friend d’Artagnan to remain ignorant of my stay in Paris. If he had guessed the reason for this obfuscation, he had not shown it.

I returned to the Hôtel de Luynes, _sans_ bird, the following day in the early afternoon. A later presentation would have been presumptuous, not to mention, may have given Grimaud a minor cardiac event.

Marie had been out, but the footman greeted me courteously and said that the duchess de Chevreuse sends her regards and had left me a package. A beautifully wrapped, slender and narrow box, with a jaunty bow on top of it awaited me, along with one of her cleverly folded billets. I paused on the stairwell to read it.

 _My dear count,_ the wily nymph wrote, _I have the temerity to bequeath another gift upon you. Although I beg you not to open the box until you have returned to Bragelonne, where I hope to join you very soon. I hear you have beautiful flowers there, and I am so fond of flora. Your humble servant, Marie_

The box burned a hole into my hand and my head spun. Oh, she was _nobody’s_ servant, that cunning vixen. She was a woman and a goddess, and much like her Olympian counterparts, she enjoyed playing games with hearts of mortals and immortals alike.

There was nothing more to keep me in Paris. Aramis was… somewhere, doing… something (or someone), and there was always the fear of running into d’Artagnan and having to explain why I had not aged in fifteen years. Returning to Blois was the safest bet. Besides, that’s what my “humble servant” bid me to do. I smiled once more at her brazen note, and did not open the box until I was safely ensconced back at Bragelonne.

Inside the box, I found a pair of finely made kid-leather gloves.

At first, I admit, I was bewildered. But then, a realization dawned on me and I flushed wildly, shoving the box with Marie’s gift into the top drawer of my secretary and shutting the tiny door closed upon it as if it were a coffin.

Weeks passed, and I had returned to my usual routine of being a benevolent lord of the manor and meditating. This time, on the nature of dependent origination. We exist in a universe where everything is interconnected and forces collide only because there are other forces that have collided before them. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It was all incredibly difficult to grasp and somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, the shadow of Eris moved, just out of reach. Forces colliding. Forces moving.

Grimaud ran into my room, white as a sheet and panting as if pursued by the Furies.

“Save yourself, Kyrios!” he pronounced, “Save yourself! For Tartarus and damnation are upon us!”

“What is it, you big drama queen? Does Aeschylus still write all your dialogue?”

“No, Kyrios, surely our dialogue is more fit to Aristophanes,” the impudent gnat contradicted me, catching his breath.

“You make me rue the day I allowed you to speak,” I responded, smiling at him. “Perhaps I should get you one of those masks that you would have worn, had you been an actor in one of Aeschylus’ tragedies. That way, I won’t have to look at your impertinent face when you make declamations. But what happened now? Is Aramis back? Has Hera found a way to physically manifest in France?”

“Worse!” he pronounced, his eyes getting so large that I almost held up the palms of my hand to catch them from falling from their sockets. “It is the Rohan Ondine, Kyrios.” And then he added, “With luggage.”

“Well, get a room prepared for her, you imbecile!” I ordered and sped past him to greet my only somewhat expected guest.

I found her in the vestibule, accompanied by the same Kitty (only ten years older now) who had witnessed our first encounter in Roche-L’Abeille, and who apparently guarded her mistress with the same ferocity as my own Grigori. Neither of them was dressed as a cavalier, but their traveling dresses were modest enough to hide Marie’s true identity. Regardless of the incongruous austerity of her outfit, I found her stunning, and when she turned her azure eyes upon me, my step faltered. But only for a moment, and then I took her hand in mine and pressed it to my lips.

“Welcome to Bragelonne, Madame,” I said.

“I hope you were expecting me, count,” she smiled.

“To expect such a favor is foolishness of any man, but madness in my position,” I responded with a short bow.

“And yet, sir, you are glad to see me?” she asked with that charming and feigned coyness so particular to her.

“Ecstatic, Madame.”

***

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, holding the rope in my hand with great uncertainty.

“Do you trust me enough _not_ to tie me up?” Marie’s hand, hidden is a cream-colored, long, silk glove trailed over the buttons of my doublet.

“Marie,” I started to say, but she pressed a silken finger against my lips.

“Shhh,” she breathed close to my ear, but not quite touching it. “I know what’s at stake, believe me, I do. But I also know that your gods cannot manifest here. Here, in France, my kind reigns supreme.”

“If the curse is triggered, Hera will find me,” I replied.

“Then you must be very careful not to touch me,” she smiled and turned her back to me. She wore a tightly laced bodice over an equally tightly laced corset, like armor or an exoskeleton over her seemingly delicate body. Between the two lay the layers of her dress. It was also cream-colored, to match her gloves, and devoid of any ostentatious flamboyance so common in that day and age. She appeared more a goddess than a duchess than ever before. “You should loosen my corset,” she suggested.

I loosened her bodice and the laces of the corset, just enough to leave space to slip a hand in between the material and her nymphic, white skin. I was amazed to find that my fingers did not tremble. My hands were encased in the gloves that she had given me, and I pulled against the bones of the corset to see the impressions that the crude, human apparatus had made against her delicate skin.

“Do you not find this confining?” I asked, standing so close behind her that the aroma from her skin and hair began to overwhelm me. “I thought nymphs would prefer to dress more diaphanously.”

“I’d like to see you freed of your clothes, too,” she giggled. “But all in due course.” She turned her head and I took a step backwards, lest our lips collide. “Now then,” her eyes glittered in the candlelight, “I know you are very adept with rope.”

“Gods above,” I muttered, “How much did Aramis tell you?”

She laughed again and, unbidden, the thought of them together came into my mind, only this time, the idea was not at all repugnant to me. I observed my sudden fancy with a casual detachment and thought I wouldn’t much mind seeing them together in reality as well. In the meantime, she stretched out upon my bed, feline grace to rival that of my demonic lover, and extended her arms above her head.

“I’m yours,” she whispered. “Do as you please with me.”

I thought for a moment of her turning to water under my hands and a desire welled up in me to make her wet again. This time, not with fear but with pleasure.

With her hands finally bound to the headboard, she was laid out for me like a feast worthy of the Gods. We had both kept our clothes on, for we had discussed that it would be best to tread carefully. But how do you dip one toe into a curse and see what happens? She sounded so sure that no matter what befell us her kin would be able to protect me. I did not have confidence enough to take her at her word, which she understood perfectly, but I also had not meditated enough to have let go of all concept of earthly desires.

At that precise moment, for example, lust welled up like the Bull from the Sea inside my gut. She was water and of water we were all made. She was the Moon controlling the tide of my arousal and I stood over her, flexing and unflexing my fingers as they stretched out against the thin leather of my gloves.

I ran my hands down her arms, admiring the way they seemed to relax under my touch, even in their bound state, and then I let my gloved finger trail over the contours of her face. Her eyes shimmered as I touched her lips with my thumb.

“I wish I could really touch you,” I said, as she sucked my thumb in between her lips and I felt the sharp points of her small teeth against my encased flesh.

“Your desire for me should be greater for the inconvenience,” she responded when she deemed it fit to let go of my thumb. I saw the pink point of her tongue as it disappeared back behind her teeth. She arched off the bed, her body craving touch. _My_ touch. And my hand slipped further, down her neck, and then along the top of her bodice, where her breast swelled with life beneath my palm and fingers.

“It is,” I concurred and lowered myself onto the bed next to her. “I wish I could kiss you,” I said, pressing my lips against the rigid bones of her corset, the lace of the bodice over her breast bone and stomach, the armor that kept us separated. Her clothes held her scent, the scent of her body that was detectable like the finest perfume, as well as the scent of the perfume itself.

I trailed my mouth over the material, moving down as my body fit into the valley between her thighs, spread now beneath me, but still hidden from view by the layers of her skirt. My hands paused at the curves of her hips, and I felt their roundness through the layers, so unlike the body of a man that my heart could not help but flutter in my chest.

I lifted myself off, needing a moment to reconsider my strategy. After all, I wasn’t just going to tie her to my bed and rut against her like some beast. Marie was a delicate and delectable creature, who, for all her feminine wiles, did not appear to wish me harm. And I was a three millennia old son of the All Father: surely, I could handle myself without causing either one of us undue embarrassment.

Her body arched off the bed to follow the heat of mine. For a moment, I thought she might speak again, but then I dragged my hand over the outline of one her legs and she only purred like a content cat and her body relaxed back into the bed.

“You are so beautiful, Marie. If I had seen you back then, I do not know what I would have done,” I spoke, allowing my hand to trail underneath her skirt. Her legs were stockinged, and I dragged my hand to the top of her thigh to pull the gossamer thin material down until her liberated, naked foot lay in the palm of my gloved hand.

“To me, or to Aramis?” she asked playfully and wiggled her toes. They lay like pearls in an oyster shell against the dark leather of my glove.

“To both of you, perhaps,” I responded, honestly, “Or to myself.” What I imagined of her had driven me mad enough, but had I known who my rival truly was, I may have died of a broken heart long before we ever met d’Artagnan.

I lifted her leg and brought her bare foot up to my mouth and pressed a soft kiss along the rising arch.

“Ah!” she gasped, “You better have had only the most chaste thoughts there, Monsieur!”

“I only had thoughts of veneration,” I replied and placed her foot back onto the bed. “Although they’re likely to veer in decidedly unchaste waters at any moment.”

I slipped my hands under her skirt again and spread her legs apart. Her breath caught and her eyes bore into my own with a dark intensity. An animalistic desire tore at my insides and begged me to lose control. Instead, I slowly and methodically rolled up her skirts to her knees and spread her thighs apart to reveal what lay between.

“Decidedly unchaste,” I repeated, my lips parting and going dry as I looked upon the beauty of her nymphic moisture. It breathed and glistened like an orchid covered in morning dew.

“Is it as terrifying as you remember it?” she teased and I laughed, pulling her skirts down again and spreading my body over hers, pressing her into the bed with all my weight.

I buried my face in the pillow next to her head, where her hair spilled against my lips, and pressed the unmistakable hardness of my own cock into the hidden valley between her thighs. Layers of clothing sat like robed judges between us, yet I had not remembered being this aroused since… Well, since the first time Aramis gave himself to me, I supposed.

“Marie,” I panted, lamenting my body’s crude reaction to her. “Gods, Marie, this is torture.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” her breath came hotly against my ear. “Let me see you,” she whispered, her foot gently prodding the back of my calf. “I want to see you. Fair is fair.”

The amount of control she exercised over me, even though she was the one tied up, was not entirely lost on me as I rose to my knees and unbuttoned my breeches. I pulled my engorged cock out and bit my lip at the expression on her face. Her smile was one of pure triumph.

“Oh _Poseidon_!” she sighed. “Aramis is one lucky creature of the night!”

“Perhaps we should not speak of him,” I suggested, wrapping my hand tightly around myself to resume some semblance of control.

“On the contrary, I see no reason not to,” she giggled and strained against her bonds. Perhaps it had been the right thing, to restrain her. Who knows what she might have touched in the heat of passion. “I have often thought of the two of you together, and this will add another _dimension_ to my fantasies.” I laughed at her brazen pronouncement and then she held my gaze again. “Touch yourself for me,” she commanded and I obeyed for I seemed incapable of doing anything other than her bidding at that moment. She watched with half-lidded eyes as my hand moved slowly over the length of my cock, her tongue moved with precision over her lips and teeth and her breath quickened. “Now touch _me_ , for the love of Aphrodite,” she breathed out, her voice seemingly no longer her own.

I reached into her bodice and took out one of her breasts. It molded to my touch, heavy and soft at once, and I rolled her pink nipple between my thumb and forefinger, awakening it into a flushed hardness. Again, her breath quickened and roses of desire colored her cheeks. My own needs forgotten for the time being, I had hastened to liberate her other breast and let them rest there against the armor of her corset.

“You are a goddess,” I said, lowering my head over her body again, and gently blowing over the hardening nubs that still sat between my gloved fingers. I regretted not being able to take them between my lips, to lave at them with my tongue, for then I could truly venerate her the way the Gods had intended. The way Aramis may have done. “And if Hera punishes me for this, so be it.” Still holding her breasts in my hands I buried my face in the lace of her dress again, hoping that somehow the heat from my mouth could penetrate through to her skin.

“I will slap her if she does,” Marie sighed and parted her thighs beneath me again.

Even through the layers of her skirt, I could smell the sweetness of her arousal and I rubbed my head in between her thighs like a feline creature myself, wondering whether her scent would stay with me, clinging to my hair the way it clung to her own clothes. She writhed and held tightly to me with her legs, while I pressed my mouth to the hidden mound under the skirts and made it wet with my own saliva until I could taste her through the layers separating us and she moaned loudly against me.

“Athos… Athos… please.” It would appear that I had undone the nymph as surely as she was undoing me.

One of my hands intrepidly ran up her thigh again, finding that heat and moisture that I could feel even though the leather of my gloves, and I breached her with one of my fingers while my teeth sank into the reinforced material of her bodice.

“Please, please touch me,” she purred, her eyes closed, her hair completely dishevelled, her naked breasts heaving above my head like beacons that I needed to grasp.

She was not a man, and she was wet - oh _so_ wet - and I put two more fingers inside her, thrusting my hand into her as she moaned. My other hand ran over the soft curves of her breast, over her neck, cupped her face again so that I could watch her writhing in ecstasy. It had been a long time, perhaps, but I still remembered how to make a woman fall apart with my hands. I pressed my thumb against the tender bud of her clitoris that had swollen under my touch and fucked the rest of my hand into her. Her thighs clenched around my wrist and I could feel the throbbing pulsation of her orgasm in answer to the thrusting of my fingers.

“Marie…” Did I… Did she?

“Oh _Gods_ ,” she moaned, so close to me, so close, I wanted so much to bury my face in her neck and feel and taste her skin with my own lips. Instead, I grasped her tightly and used my free hand to finish myself off with a guttural cry that was as much victorious as it was surprised. “Your Father in Heaven!” she sighed as I slumped next to her.

“Madame,” I spoke through a cloud of haze and confusion, “I’m afraid your dress is ruined.” I turned to face her and found her grinning like the proverbial cat who got the cream.

“I brought many dresses, chéri,” she replied.


	2. Chapter 2

**Château Bragelonne, August 1643**

Marie had not been gone two days when I received new visitors. I suspected she may have stayed longer, had Grimaud not reminded me of the date over breakfast and I gazed at the nymph across from me with poorly concealed worry.

“Say no more, chéri, I travel light,” she laughed, her unbraided hair falling about her shoulders like a gilded cape.

As ever in our Parisian days, she was neck deep in a political plot, of which she told me enough that I had reason to worry for her safety. But I had no rights over her, so I would not prevent her leaving. I merely made it clear she could always find safe harbor at Bragelonne.

When she had been fully cuirassed in her vestments and the hood of a velvet cloak covered her beautiful head, I pressed her up against the wall, feeling the fluvial flow of her body against mine while she wrapped her arms around my neck. None of my Father’s thunderbolts had stricken us in the weeks she had remained at the château, but a jolt of forbidden pleasure still sent a tingle down my spine each time I held her close.

“I will see you soon,” she purred.

“Will you, Marie?”

“This body is prone to aging and mortality, darling, there is no time like the present! _Carpe noctum_ , count!”

She was gone, but her perfume still lingered, mixing now with the heady aroma that the dog days of summer carried from the gardens. Grimaud, all eye-bags and blood-shed sclera, shook his head at me on the verge of tears.

“Oh, do be sensible, you ingrate!” I turned away from him, purposefully. “Water isn’t blood - so I should expect no complaints out of you regarding the linens!”

“I will probably end up skinned alive with you this time, Kyrios,” he whined in such a dolorous voice that I almost felt pity for him myself. “Your stepmother won’t let this stand.”

“Oh, then I’m certain you will be _ecstatic_ to see Aramis when he arrives again?” I sniped, not without a touch of malice.

“The French countryside is rife with strapping, young men, just ripe for deflowering - what do you need these damned nymphs and demons for? I can fetch you a gaggle of pretty boys. You can have yourself nice orgies, like you did back home, on your Mount.”

It was surely only due to all those hours spent in meditation and concentrating on quelling my anger that I did not smack him then and there.

“Grimaud, get out.”

Before long, I heard the sound of approaching horses.

Porthos’ arms wrapped around me and nearly crushed my rib cage with their ardent embrace and then he kissed me on both cheeks and cupped my face with his hands, staring into my eyes in such a way that I wondered for a moment whether he had remembered his Greek origins.

“Oh, my dear friend, you are a sight for sore eyes!” my Titanic cousin pronounced.

“Porthos - welcome!” I placed my hands over his and extricated my face from his grasp. “Sight for sore eyes, you say? Has something befallen you, my dear?” I took him by the arm and led him to the sitting room where the rays of the August sun permeated the most.

“Mortality, humanity... It is painful, don’t you find, watching your loved ones age and die,” he sighed. “You are lucky, my friend, to have surrounded yourself only with beauty,” he pointed out the window at my gardens, but inadvertently, I thought of Grimaud and grinned impishly.

“Flowers, more than anything, wilt and die,” I replied, standing next to him. “But are reborn again in the spring, with proper care. They teach me patience.” I smiled, this time thinking of Aramis, who was to arrive either that night or the next. “Is Madame du Vallon doing poorly?” I inquired, but before Porthos could reply, a great flapping of wings alerted us to the approach of a new companion.

“Grilled Octopus!” Segundo hollered, in Greek, just as I taught him, and landed on Porthos’ shoulder.

“He remembers me! That’s sweet.” Porthos stroked the bird’s head with one of his large fingers. Indeed, it had been a few years since my friend had been to Bragelonne, and Segundo did seem rather fond of him. He was an excellent judge of character, that parrot. “And he cheers me greatly. You know, Athos, parrots can live up to a century. They make a really excellent pet for someone in our condition.”

“Well, he was a gift from a very thoughtful individual,” I replied, cryptically.

“I forgot who gave him to you,” Porthos said.

“I never told you, my dear,” I reminded him.

“Ah yes.” This seemed to satisfy him and he moved on to other things. “What are we having for dinner?”

The first time I had seen Porthos after my resurrection, he had asked me what had occurred to transform me so. “Last time I saw you, you were in dire straits. I did not know what would become of you,” he said. “Now though, you seem in the flower of health and youth, and you appear to be more calm and composed than I have ever beheld you. Yet, I do not see Aramis with you.”

Neither one of us had told Porthos what had happened to me. Aramis, I suppose, if I were being generous, hid it to spare my pride, for which I was deeply grateful. As for myself, I was always of the opinion that the less people knew the secret of my so-called Achilles’ heel, the safer I would potentially be. Instead, I had told Porthos that I had been back to Hellas and that the Gods had been propitiated on my behalf, and that it was this trip home that was responsible for the rejuvenation he had beheld in me. I dare you to find fault in what I had told him.

As to the subject of Aramis, I had merely remarked that he had gone on to Italy and was fully committed to being a servant of his Lord. To which Porthos simply replied “Ave Him!” and moved on to other topics. His lady love, incidentally, was a charming specimen, for a human woman of a certain age. One could easily tell that Porthos had been the apple of her eye and an object of much doting affection. It struck me as ironic that in this seeming May/December romance, the youthful rake was actually the one who had been alive for many centuries. (Truth be told, I never did learn from Porthos exactly when he’d been conceived. Stories of his childhood varied as greatly as stories of his maternity. Last I heard, she had been the empress of Japan, even though a decade prior she had been Queen Nefertiti herself.)

While I thrived in my bucolic seclusion, Porthos seemed to grow a bit slower and shone a little less brightly than he did in the early years of our acquaintance. He had mentioned that his beloved ball of sunshine was losing power, and I had suggested that perhaps a trip home to recharge would also do him some good. But in his tender affections, my friend was loath to leave his Madame for too long. “I’ll go once she’s no longer with us,” he said, rather matter of factly. “Until then, I will have to make do with natural sunlight.”

Natural sunlight was plenty, until dusk, which was - not surprisingly - when we heard the sound of horse hooves outside, announcing the arrival of Aramis.

***

I had lost track of when I had last seen Athos and Aramis at the same place and at the same time. Come to think of it, I have lost track of when I had last seen Aramis entirely. All in all, it wasn’t such an unusual thing, given that clocks and calendars have historically meant little to beings such as ourselves. Only, my immortality did not take away my memory. I remembered them as they had been, when I first met them. And I remembered them as they were when Aramis left, some fifteen years ago. And I beheld them again as they were at Bragelonne: it did not compute.

I had already had time over the years to acclimate myself to this new, more sedate, more lucid version of Athos. It now appeared that I would also have to accustom myself to a wholly different version of Aramis.

He looked the same. In fact, I could tell he’d taken great care of his appearance before arrival. His priestly garb, which I expected, was conspicuously absent. His cavalier’s dress was of the latest style and judging by the shiny and immaculate buttons and ribbons, entirely new. On the index finger of his left hand was an emerald ring that could only have been a gift from a person of wealth and power. In the glow of the setting sun, his dark hair shone like burnished bronze.

In a word, he looked hot.

I glanced over at Athos to see whether all that effort had produced the desired effect, but my cousin seemed unmoved. Or, at least, not moved beyond the customary warm greeting that he would have bestowed upon any friend, and such that he had afforded me. I watched their lips graze each other’s cheeks in a perfunctory way, and then I too grasped the blood-sucking demon in my arms and squeezed him tight, for I dare say I missed that rascal.

“It’s been too long,” Athos voiced what likely all three of us were thinking. I felt a stirring of emotion while Aramis smiled almost awkwardly and avoided my eyes.

Just then, his eyes fixed over Athos’ shoulder and he turned to our host with a scandalized look. “What is _that_!” he pointed at a Greek statue that stood among the rosebeds.

“Grimaud’s idea of a joke,” Athos shrugged.

“What next, Athos?” Aramis sneered. “A whole façade of Antinoi caryatids?”

“I don’t get it,” I said, having no desire to even plunder the depths of their lunacy. So now Greek statues offended Aramis’ sensibilities? What next, indeed?

“Why don’t you explain it to him,” Aramis shot over his shoulder and walked briskly into the château.

Athos opened his mouth, furrowed his brows, closed his mouth and sighed.

“Well?” I asked. “What was that all about?”

“We used to be… He was my lover once. Um, about fifteen centuries ago.”

“Who?”

“Antinous.”

“ _That_?” I pointed at the statue. It was pretty and had perky nipples, but other than that, I still wasn’t sure how it was such a provocation or indignity to Aramis.

“Yes. Well, when he was alive.”

“Oh.”

Neither one of us said much and Athos looked away as if lost in other thoughts.

“Nice?” I finally asked.

“What?”

“Was he good?”

“Who?”

“ _Him_.”

“Oh, Hera’s tits!” he muttered and followed Aramis inside. I remained in the garden to admire this scandalous affront to Aramis’ integrity some more. The marble was white and smooth and I could not help but reach out my hand and place it on the statue’s bent knee.

“Oh, Jesus! Not him too!” I heard Aramis’ voice, followed by the slamming shut of the sitting room blinds.

I have to say, the bizarre behavior did not abate there. The entire evening at dinner, I had the distinct displeasure of watching Aramis shoot Athos the kind of looks that were a lot more murderous than amourous, mostly when the other wasn’t looking. While the conversation flowed freely and our host tried to keep it light and jovial, I could not help but sense that I was witnessing some kind of drama unfolding to which I had somehow missed the entire first two acts.

“What happened to the two of you?” I finally asked, dropping all pretense of enjoyment. “You were disgusting once, true. But I liked it! I was rooting for you! And now that you’re apparently no longer an item, I don’t know… I feel kind of betrayed. This is worse than when you sunk my ship!”

“What ship?”

“Grilled Octopus!” Segundo cried out from the perch in the corner.

“Oh for the love of…!” Aramis covered his eyes with his hand, the one that had the egregiously large ring on it.

“We did not sink your ship!” Athos protested vehemently. “The Grilled Octopus was doomed with or without our interference!”

“Well, it’s been fifteen years since Aramis left - why haven’t the two of you made up?” I demanded, not a bit mollified.

“Who says we haven’t made up?” the increasingly terrifying blood-sucker asked. His tone chilled me to the bone even though he smiled as he spoke.

“We’re very made up,” Athos reassured me.

“But you’re not… whatever…” I pointed between the two of them with my fork. “He has joined the Church and you have statues of ex-lovers in your rose garden.” They both grimaced and looked away from me. “What isn’t working? Is it because Aramis still sleeps around with nymphs?”

At that, Aramis jumped up from the table and Athos rose as well, and placed his hand on our friend’s shoulder as if trying to pacify a wild stallion.

“Forgive me, my friends,” Aramis blanched and bit his lips. “I grow tired from the long journey. I’m afraid I shall have to retire for the night.”

It wasn't quite a Latin treatise, but it was a flimsy excuse at best. Athos’ hand slid down his arm and he stepped out of Aramis’ way, allowing him to depart for his chamber with yet another murderous look cast in our host’s direction.

“What have you done to him?” I asked, when we had resumed our repast (which had been excellent from a culinary perspective despite my apprehensions about my companions).

“I’ve done nothing to him. Whatever can you mean?”

“He’s… changed, isn’t he? He seems a bit… uh,” how could I put this? “Unhinged?”

“He’s fine.”

“How can you say he’s fine? He’s clearly in a foul state.” And _evil_. It was the only word I could think of to describe him. But I didn’t want to say that, not to Athos. Not yet, anyway.

“I suppose the Church has hardened him,” Athos shrugged and cut into his poultry.

“The Church,” I mumbled, shaking my head. Something had hardened him, all right, but I wasn’t entirely certain the Church had been to blame. Athos was mistaken: something was very much amiss with Aramis, and he had been the cause of it himself. I just could not fathom _how_ or _why_ , for even now Athos appeared to be viewing our mutual friend through a rose-colored lens. He’d always been Athos’ “little chyortik” but surely anyone could see the demon wasn’t so “little” anymore.

“He’ll be better in the morning,” Athos said and then steered conversation towards other things.

In fact, Athos had been entirely wrong on that account, because by morning Aramis was gone.

I was not trying to eavesdrop on them, but it had been a hot August night and I had my faithful M. Mouston open all my windows before retiring for bed. My chamber had turned out to be directly underneath that of Athos, so if their voices carried from his balcony, I wasn’t going to merely put a pillow over my head, was I?

Alas, what reached my ears were mere fragments, and what I heard, I made very little sense of.

“No, you tell me, how _many_ , Athos? One out of four? Two of out of four?”

“Aramis, stop, it wasn’t like that.”

“Zero, then? You feel zero kinds of love for her? Why? Because she’s a woman?”

“Why does this even _matter_ to you!”

“How can you even ask!”

“The hypocrisy of your fellow clergy has surely spread to you like a contagion!”

“At least I know the God at whose altar I serve! I’ve lost track with you! Do you not discriminate at all?”

“You’re no longer _with_ her!”

“And you’re no longer with _me_! Is that it?”

A brief commotion followed, then the slamming of shutters, the rattling of glass. I lay awake, bewildered, upset, a sinking, sucking feeling in the pit of my gut despite all the food that Athos had generously provided earlier. I was still awake when I heard the sound of galloping horse hooves: it was the flittermouse, flittering away in the night.

It felt as if another of my ships had sunk and I could not bear it.

***

For a decade, the castle of Bragelonne, this Paradise on Earth, had been the safe harbour, the protective cocoon wherein I would find solace and regain peace of mind when my wanderings through Europe had left me fatigued and drained. The protective cocoon had now for the first time morphed into something more sinister; a spider’s web from which I couldn’t come loose, no matter how hard I struggled. I had little fancy for finding myself the fly, while Athos, of all people, assumed the role of the spider: lying in wait, sheltered behind the twofold shield of his castle and his tranquillity, waiting, welcoming, pulling my strings and devouring me when I came to see him.

I had been looking forward to seeing Porthos again, whom I had not seen those ten years. Porthos, who had been my friend and my brother for over one hundred and fifty years; whom I knew better even than I knew Athos. Who had loved me unconditionally and whom I had loved back, for his unwavering, unquestioning loyalty and that friendship that he bestowed upon me so freely. He had been there when Athos was lost to the sea, and he was there when Athos was lost to the icy lake of his own mind. Of the three of us, I believed Porthos to be eternal, like God, although less patient.

Why, then, had my fangs tingled and my mind frozen at dinner? Why did Porthos’ unveiled, ungraceful questions, which used to be charming in their honest simplicity, feel like the cold blade of a knife dragging over raw nerves?

I had seen the family resemblance between those two demigods tonight. They were possessed of a sincerity, of a heart that I did not have, even though I might have had two souls.

I had Bazin fetch hot water and took a bath by the open window of my room: the room that was at my disposal every time I visited the comte de La Fère in his rural idyll. I sat down in front of the mirror and studied my face by the light of a dozen candles. My skin was smooth and my eyes glittered with concealed fire. Ever since I had returned to Paris, where I had to pretend I had aged fifteen years since my last stint there, I would search my face for traces of true ageing. Were those lines that formed in the corners of my eyes and my mouth? I dipped my hand in a china jar and washed my face with mercury water. I dried it carefully, rubbed in a lotion of almond oil and beeswax and applied a thin layer of pearl powder that gave my skin a translucent glow and turned my eyes into black diamonds. Antinous stood in his garden. He might not have put him there, but he permitted him to stay, and I knew that his gaze would often stray thoughtfully over those boyish features and lithe limbs.

I dressed myself carefully and picked up a book. My eyes were glued to the letters, but my ears were attuned to the noises without, waiting to pick up the sound of Athos’ steps when he retired to his chamber for the night. My body was impatient to press itself into his, and I ran my tongue over the row of my teeth, relishing in the way it caught on the sharp tips of my fangs. In the mirror, they shimmered like white corals between my parted lips.

Once all sounds but for the song of the night died down around me, I left my room and crept across the corridor. His door was unbolted, as I knew it would be. The air within his chamber was cool and fresh, and the curtain fluttered under the breath of one of the Anemoi that flowed in from the garden. It carried the scent of ripe cherries and plums, and it carried something else also. Something that did not belong here. There was the scent of the ocean, a crisp saltiness that has forever imprinted itself on my senses. And there was something else yet, heavier even than the heady scent of the summer night. The expensive fragrance of-

“Marie, Athos?” I said once the door closed behind me. Athos was sitting at his desk, immaculately dressed in violet-tinted velvet, trimmed with silk of the same colour. His dark hair curled in luscious locks against the pristine white of the splendid lace that adorned the falling collar of his shirt. He looked up at me and something in my face must have arrested him, for he blushed and then bit his lips and lowered his eyes.

“How did you know?”

I laughed, showing him my fangs as they flashed in candlelight. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

He put the papers away and turned to me fully, facing me with the air of a man who was prepared for the worst. “I met her in Paris,” he said in that calm, vibrant voice of his that habitually sent shivers down my spine – especially when it reverberated directly into my skin. “I liked her, Aramis. You were right. She is delightful, she is… well. I don’t have to tell you what she is.”

I couldn’t stop laughing, even as I approached him slowly, never taking my eyes off his. I was waiting for him to stand up, but he didn’t. He remained seated and poised, wrapped in his protective cocoon of calm, and I wanted to throw myself at him. For what? I did not know. Whenever I had felt like that in the past, the moment our bodies made impact we would be tearing off each other’s clothes, my fangs would be tearing through his jugular and we would be driving into each other, until my fury erupted in blissful ecstasy. That avenue had been closed. Even if I could overpower him, taking anything off him by force was not what I wanted.

“And so you invited her.”

“She invited herself. She is-” He smiled; I could tell he didn’t mean to, but the smile escaped him in spite him himself. “She’s a very headstrong woman.”

I stood by his chair, by his side, and I reached out and placed my hand on his cheek, pulling his head closer until it rested against my ribs. I looked down at the dark hair, neatly parted and arranged in lush curls, into which I dug my fingers. “And that’s why you had to fuck her?” My anger was such that it had rendered my fingertips cold as ice. Athos exhaled sharply, freed himself from my grip and stood.

“I did not,” he said quietly, looking me straight in the eye.

I laughed into his face, tore myself away from that penetrating, dark gaze and strode to the bed. I clutched a handful of linen, yanked it up and brought it to my nose.

“Oh, didn’t you?” I sniffed demonstrably, even though it was purely for his benefit, not mine, because I could smell the scent from all the way across the room. “Your sheets are drenched in Loire water. Your whole _house_ reeks of Loire water.”

A lesser man might have lied; not so my honourable godling. He sighed heavily, as if he was Atlas himself, with the weight of the sky resting on his shoulders.

I raised my eyebrows and tossed the sheets away. “Am I a nuisance, Athos? Would you rather I left you alone with my pesky questions?” _And feelings?_

“You’re angry,” he said and his gaze dropped to my mouth, as if he was trying to ascertain if my fangs had dropped. But I kept them hidden. I did not want him to see.

“Of all the women who would gladly give themselves to the comte de La Fère - you _had_ to fall in love with my-. With Marie!”

He frowned. “Don’t speak of love, Aramis.” And for the first time, I heard the rumble of Olympian thunder behind his mild voice and manner. But I had weathered worse.

“I assume it has to be love if you’re willing to risk everything.”

“I realise I’ve risked my friendship with you. I apologise.”

“Your friendship?” I stared at him. “What about all this?” I made a sweeping gesture to indicate our surroundings. “What about everything you hold dear? What about your fucking life? Or did you have an Olympian revelation while you were dead,” I spat into his face, “that told you that the curse had been lifted? Remember the curse? It destroyed,” _you, us_ , “everything.”

Athos was getting angry as well. His eyes blazed and he pulled himself up, squaring his shoulders like a man readying himself for a fight.

“And you believe that love is the only possible answer?” His voice was laden with a sarcasm that bit me to the bone.

“As to that I have no doubt.” I hissed through clenched teeth. “The only question that remains is: how many kinds of love?”

“Don’t you think you’re taking a rather simplistic view, Aramis?”

“No, you tell me, how _many_ , Athos? One out of four? Two of out of four?”

“Aramis, stop, it wasn’t like that.”

“Zero, then? You feel zero kinds of love for her? Why? Because she’s a woman?”

“Why does this even _matter_ to you!”

“How can you even ask!”

“The hypocrisy of your fellow clergy has surely spread to you like a contagion!”

“At least I know the God at whose altar I serve! I’ve lost track with you! Do you not discriminate at all?”

“You’re no longer _with_ her!”

“And you’re no longer with _me_! Is that it?”

The cry of an owl tore through the air and we both shuddered, like men coming up from underwater. Athos glanced at the open windows, the billowing curtains, and he walked over and slammed the shutters with more force than was necessary. It gave me some satisfaction to see that he had not remained unmoved by the heat of our argument.

“You were the one who left,” he barked, turning back to me.

“You’re right.” We stared at each other across the room. Athos was flushed still; anger had brought the blood in his veins to a boil. My own blood heaved in sympathy as I watched him grapple for control. If I touched him now… or if he touched me… we would find ourselves tumbling into the rumpled sheets, struggling to undo each other, with the essence of the Loire swirling like vapour around us. “I was. And I will be again.” I bowed to him with my hand pressed to my chest and slipped out of the door. He didn’t follow me to hold me back, and even though I hadn’t expected him to, I felt the stab of disappointment pierce through my heart. Was that how Athos had felt when his heart was breaking, all those years ago? The same fate would not befall me. My heart, such as it was, was well protected in a cocoon of my own making.

My unquenched blood was seething in my veins still when I snuck away, long before the first cock-crow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Château Bragelonne, dog days of summer 1643**

I sat underneath the chestnuts, my eyes closed, my mind devoid of all thought except my own breath. I had lost track of time yet I was completely aware of seemingly every particle of my being. I was nowhere near understanding true emptiness, but I had learned to make my mind stand still.

Imagine my surprise then, when in that stillness, a shadow moved and a big black dog wandered into my path. His eyes glowed yellow in his wolf-like face, but he wagged his tail as he approached, and immediately sniffed my loins, as canine kind are prone to doing. I grinned and ran my hands over the thick, black fur, scratching the beast behind his ear.

“Ares,” I whispered, “what are you doing here?”

My recognition seemed to give my brother enough power to shed his canine form and anthropomorphize before me. He had not brought his armor, but still wore the golden helmet that shone brightly even in my mind’s eye. I could not help but think of Aramis, and the snide commentary he would make, as War sprawled nakedly before me.

“Athos,” he smiled at me in a rather friendly way for an abandoned god, “You are causing quite a stir back home!” He threw his head back as he laughed. “And I must admit, I came here in part to remind you to tread carefully.”

“And in other part?”

He laughed again. “Mother is furious! You should have heard her and dad going at it! She would have brought down a rain of fire on all Ondines,” he grinned slyly, “if water could burn, of course.” 

“You find this all awfully amusing,” I spoke cautiously. Why was he not angry at me himself? But Ares was just, I recalled. He rewarded those who served him faithfully. And killed his daughter’s rapist, even though it meant an open quarrel with our uncle Poseidon, for which the Olympic tribunal had acquitted him on the day that gave it’s name to Areopagus.

“Amusing? Brother, you have no idea! Your life is the latest _Iliad_.”

“I wish you would not say that,” I shifted uncomfortably.

“Speaking of which, how did you ever get Homer to alter his tale to leave you out of it?”

“I didn’t have to,” I smiled with pride, “such is the nature of the oral narrative. It can be altered by anyone at any time until the first time it is written down.”

“I’ve always said you were as clever as you are strong,” Ares slapped my knee and my body reverberated with a call to arms. “But don’t you wish to hear about the thunderbolts?”

I did, I admit. I was not beyond a bit of familial gossip, especially if it meant that I had somehow managed to get the upper hand on Hera Herself.

But first, “Ares,” I looked around suspiciously, “Where is she? Is she with you?” War and Strife were known for being inseparable. 

He shook his head and his long black hair, not unlike my own, produced the din of a hundred swords around us. 

“I would not do that to you, brother. If she wants another bite, she’ll have to find her own way, won’t she?” Somehow, I was not very relieved to hear that. “Don’t look so glum, Athos. A man could do worse than win the eternal favor of the Goddess of Discord.”

“Her favor does me no favors,” I inclined my head. “Forgive me, brother. It’s been too long since you and I have spoken.” I had not invoked him in some time. “And how are your children: Eros, Anteros, Phobos, Deimos, Adrestia and Harmonia?” I asked, for if politeness was a good policy with the Anemoi, imagine the tight rope I walked with Ares, after I had stepped off his path. And those were only his eldest! In truth, I would not be able to recall all of the rest.

“Your nieces and nephews,” he jovially slapped my other knee and a sudden urge to kill rose up inside me. I breathed and reminded myself that we were merely inside my mind, for the time being, where no one was master but I, myself. “They are well, for Love and War are eternal. As is Strife.”

I was silent. Love and War might be eternal, but Strife was a thing of _samsara_ , and I was determined to break free of her.

“Tell me of Hera’s wrath then,” I lifted my eyes up to his, which even in his anthropomorphic face glowed with the fires of war, bright yellow and red, shining like his golden helmet.

“I’ll do you one better,” he winked. “I will show you!” And he touched his fingers to my temples, pulling me into a memory so vivid that I felt my heart trying to race away with me.

“How is he doing that!” my step-mother hollered while my Olympian Father scratched his beard and tried not to laugh. “That counts! Tell me that _counts_!” For a Goddess of Family, she was not acting like a very warm home-maker.

“Now, now, sweetheart. Let's be fair. There is no skin on skin contact - there is no touching!” Then, Zeus leaned to his right where my siblings Apollo and Athena sat and extended his hand. “What do you say, Apollo, who are the god of truth and prophecy? And you, Athena, goddess of wisdom?”

“Don’t put the children in the position to pick sides!” the Goddess of Marriage howled. “Besides, Athena will always side with you - she sprung from your head!”

That parthenogenesis was a neat trick. I wondered he'd only done it the one time. Rumor had it, it had given Father quite the headache. 

“I can think for myself, thank you!” my one normal sibling declared and added, “And Athos has not violated the terms of your ridiculous curse!” I knew there was a reason she was my favorite.

“There now, daughter, my wife is right to seek out one without bias. Then, Ares, who is the son of us both, let him decide!” my Father suggested rather jovially, leaning over to the left, where my warlike brother sat in shining armor.

“The nymph has found a loophole, Mother,” Ares stated, managing to somehow look contrite. “He hasn’t actually touched her, certainly not with his cock.” Behind him, Eris unfurled her huge, black wings. “What do you think, Eris?” my brother asked, rather sweetly.

“He cheated,” Discord stated tersely.

“On you?” Hermes whispered in her ear, his eyes shining with mercurial glee.

“We must punish him!” Hera insisted.

“We will absolutely not,” Zeus protested, twirling a diminutive thunderbolt between his fingers. “Leave the boy alone, Hera!” And as an aside to Apollo again, he whispered, “Ha! Look at him go! I’m so proud of the fruit of my loins.”

“I’ve seen enough!” I declared and Ares let go of my temple. 

“Don’t worry brother,” he laughed seeing me so flustered, “The Dodekatheon voted, and Mother and Eris were in the vast minority. You and the nymph will be safe.”

“Why me?” I moaned and buried my face in my hands. His hand landed on my shoulder and a sudden desire to raise arms against the entire world boiled my blood.

“Cheer up, brother. Lovers, they come and go. But family is forever.”

I somehow did not find this idea comforting. 

“Thank you for picking my side,” I replied with sincerity.

“Before long, I’m sure you will serve me again.” He rose and stood before me in all his nude glory. “As for Eris,” he spoke, looking down at me where I still sat, “You loved her once. Perhaps you will love her once more. After all, you’ve given up your revenant.”

And in a column of red flames, he disappeared, leaving no trace that he’d ever been there, except the thundering of a war drum inside my heart. _To battle, Achaeans, to battle!_ it called. 

I woke up under the chest nuts, not entirely sure when I had fallen asleep, and whether anything I had seen in my dream had been real.

***

When I arrived at the château de Bragelonne on a sultry evening in September, it was not on an entirely disinterested visit. At the sound of my carriage in the courtyard, the comte de La Fère emerged from the kitchen gardens, dressed in immaculate purple and silver, but bare-headed. Behind him hopped his parrot, chattering gaily to himself. Athos strode to my carriage and reached out an elegant hand, set off beautifully by a ruffle of lace. I lay my hand in his and felt his fingers curl around mine. His fine eyes, dark and liquid in the light of the setting sun, shone with genuine joy. I smiled at him and he smiled back, pressing my hand more warmly, and his gaze flickered, ever so briefly, to where my cloak fell open over my breasts.

“Hera’s cunt!” The parrot had flown onto Athos' shoulder and was eyeing me, tilting his head. The spell of the moment was broken; Athos and I both laughed and he helped me alight, almost pulling me into his arms as I leapt down from the step. It was only when he spotted the head of Kitty peek out from the carriage that he took a step back and bowed to me, dislodging the bird who fluttered away with a parting curse.

“Welcome to Bragelonne, Madame la duchesse,” he said in that rich, honeyed voice of his the vibrations of which trickled down my spine and reverberated in my loins. “It is an unexpected pleasure.”

“I was hoping you would say that,” I told him, while my maid alighted, curtseyed and began to arrange the unloading of my trunks. Grimaud, with an expression of almost imbecile impassivity on his face that fooled neither Kitty nor myself, pretended to follow her orders meekly. “Whereas I have had the pleasure of anticipation all day, count, ever since I set off from Tours.”

“I believed you to be in Paris, Madame,” he said, conducting me inside. I leaned on his arm and felt the way his muscles flexed in his forearm, beneath the layers of soft fabric and supple skin.

“I was forced to leave Paris,” I glanced at him from the side; the proud, noble profile with the finely-cut mouth; the long lashes that fluttered half-shut, as if he wished to conceal the expression in his eyes.

“And so you chose to come to Bragelonne? I am flattered, Madame. However-” We had ascended the stairs and he led me into his room. “However,” he breathed, having whirled me around and pressed me up against the wall with his hands and hips. “I won’t be able to protect you here. Unless you’re planning to throw yourself into the Loire if _they_ catch up with you.”

I laughed. “Not unless you have a spare infant lying around that I could take with me, count.” His face was very close to mine and I tilted my chin up to feel his breath against my lips when he spoke. Now, as ever, I longed to kiss him. “I would be inconsolable if I had to part from you forever.”

A corner of his mouth curled up and a line appeared next to it that I wanted to trace with the tip of my tongue. I licked my own lip instead and said, “I believe, count, the Goddess of Family intended to punish womankind even more than punish you.” His smile morphed into something darker, edgier, and I shook my head and laid a gloved finger across his lips. “As restricted as you are by the curse, you are still free to move within those boundaries. The choice is yours. You alone decide how far you want to stray into forbidden territory. All I can do is submit to your guidance. I am not,” I traced the outline of his mouth with the tip of my finger, “accustomed to submitting.”

The tip of his tongue pressed, hot and insistent, against the pad of my finger. “Are you speaking of the good abbé again, Madame?” There was a steely edge concealed beneath the mocking tone.

“Oh, him!” I laughed and pressed my hips more deeply into Athos, whose hands wandered upwards from my hips and stopped beneath my breasts. “Aramis is exceptional, in every respect. You know that better than anyone.”

A shadow settled upon his brow and I passed my hand over it, to brush away the cobwebs of melancholia and memories. The grip around my ribcage tightened, thumbs digging in so hard I felt them through my starched and whalebone-reinforced breastplate. I lifted my face to his to brush my hair against the line of his jaw, his cheekbone, and felt a few strands snag in his beard. Athos pressed a kiss to the top of my head; his mouth was hot and devouring and the heat surged down in a cascade and pooled between my legs.

“I can’t stay long,” I murmured into the lace of his collar.

“Tonight?” he whispered back.

“Let us make the most of it.”

Athos exhaled a breath in a half-laugh, half-groan. In the next moment, I found myself being lifted, cradled in his arms as he held me to his chest and carried me to his bed. He nestled me gently into the pillows and crouched above me on his hands and knees. His bare fingers rested against the curves of my shoulders. “You’re not wearing your gloves, count.” I cupped his face and watched him rub himself against the soft leather like a very large, very dangerous cat.

“Then don’t move.” A long tendril of hair brushed over my face as he turned his head, and his hand slithered to the buttons of my cloak. He began to undo them, very carefully, laying my skin bare without touching it, and then he lowered his head and blew a warm breath over my skin. I arched into the warmth until I could feel his lips, almost, _almost_ touching my flesh. I felt him breathe and I felt him smile, and then he raised himself off me and rolled off the bed. I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his wrist.

“Athos-”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Of course not. Fetch me my silk gloves, please.” I began to tug off my travel gloves, which were fatigued and dirty after a long day in the carriage. He bowed and left the room, giving me the chance to rid myself of my outer garments. When he came back, he found me reclining on his bed in a state of daring déshabillé. The expression that I had heard Aramis refer to as ‘the heathen smirk’ appeared on his face and he strode towards me like an Achaean general might stride across the battlefield where he had stood victorious. He casually picked up a pair of gloves from the chest as he walked and placed my own silk ones delicately on my chest.

“You brought my fan,” I said as we both began to pull on our gloves, watching each other’s movements. “Do you intend to make me so hot that I’m going to need it?”

“I might need it.” Athos shrugged off his doublet and sank down. The loose, half-sheer material of his fine shirt flowed around his frame like water waves. One hand curled around my ankle as he lifted my leg to settle down on the foot of the bed. He picked up the fan and trailed the feathers over my chin and throat until I trembled under their ghosting caress. The soft, fleeting touch stirred my blood that began to throb beneath my skin, tingling in my lips and between my legs. Athos braced himself with one hand between my knees, pinning my dress to the mattress, and I slid down on the bed to pull him in between my legs. I snaked my foot along his hip and into his groin and traced the firm outline of his cock through his breeches. His breath was coming in harsh gasps; despite his slow, tender ministrations, I could tell how aroused he was already. A pang of regret shot through me. As delightful as those games were that we were forced to play, I could not but deplore that a lover possessed of such self-control, of so much contained passion, could not ravish me.

Athos twirled my fan around and dragged the hard handle down my breastbone, stopping only when it hit the rim of my corset. “Ah!” I gasped, raising myself off the bed in an arc and hitching my leg up higher. His hand, whose heat scorched me even through his kid-leather glove and my own petticoats and stockings, lay firm around my knee, and he pressed his open mouth to the inside of my thigh.

“Don’t be so gentle, Athos.” I rubbed my thigh against his face, to feel the moist heat of his mouth and the scratch of his beard through the thin fabric of my stocking. He groaned and dug his teeth into my flesh, and his tongue slithered into the crease behind my knee joint.

“I wish I could-” His voice was muffled against my skin, but I heard his words quite clearly.

“What?” I curled my other leg around his hip to pull him closer. “Tell me.”

“I wish I could bury myself in you, all the way.” It had happened so fast, almost before I realised he moved: suddenly, he was kneeling between my legs, hooking my knees around his hips and pushing his hard cock against me.

“Hera’s cunt!” I gasped, rubbing myself against him. Athos was looking savage, his hair tumbling around his face in waves the colour of hot chocolate and his half-unbuttoned shirt slipping slovenly off one shoulder.

“No, not Hera’s cunt,” he growled with a sharp thrust of his hips. “Yours, Madame.”

Lust churned and set my abdomen aflame. I grabbed the headboard with one hand, clinging to the sheets with the other, to stop myself from inadvertently touching him. We were fucking against each other through our clothes, until my head spun and my groin hurt from the impact of his thrusts. “Stop, stop,” I panted, and he stopped, staring down at me with wild eyes. “You truly are your father’s son,” I laughed, and, half a heartbeat later, Athos started to laugh too.

“Please tell me you never fucked my father.” He leaned over me, his waist firm, yet supple between my legs as he undulated against me, slow and gentle. “You’re not _that_ old, surely?”

I cupped his face and pulled him down into a kiss: leastways, it would have been a kiss with any other man. With Athos, I had to content myself with pressing my lips to the back of my own hand, just above the corner of his mouth. “No, never your father. Just your lover.”

“But not recently, I take it.” Athos turned his head, kissed the inside of my palm and stretched himself half-atop, half-beside me, pulling his shirt closed over his chest to cover his bare skin. His head rested on the pillow beside mine and he breathed softly against my ear to make me shiver.

“He’s left me.” I threaded my fingers through his and frowned at the sound of my own voice. It was girlish and young.

“That had nothing to do with you,” Athos said. “He left, because… something happened, and he had to go away for a while.”

“That something that happened between the two of you… I assume that was more than just a lover’s spat?”

“You can say that.” Athos lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the pads of my fingers.

“But he came back to you.”

“Not wholly.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more but thought better of it. “It surprises me that he hasn’t returned to you, Marie. He loved you very much.”

“Yes, he did.” I sighed, trailing my fingers absentmindedly over the ridge of his chin and jaw. “Perhaps this body is getting too old for him."

“That’s preposterous.” His indignation was genuine. “You, Madame, are ageless. You are the embodiment of divine beauty. And even if you weren’t – Aramis is the last man to complain about age. He enjoys being the young and beautiful one.”

“He’s sleeping with the duchess de Longueville.” A soft gasp by my ear, and I turned my head to look at Athos. His dark eyes no longer looked clouded by lust, they were alert and wary.

“What are you saying, Marie?”

“The duchess de Longueville. Anne-Geneviève. My cousin.”

“The Bourbon nymph?”

I laughed. “Poor Athos! The moment you find it in your heart to accept one nymph, another one comes along to spirit your lover away. It’s almost as if the gods had cursed you.”

“He’s also your lover,” Athos pointed out.

“Not in the way that he is yours. I’ve had many lovers. And husbands.” I smiled, for the memory of my recent husbands was not a disagreeable one. I always liked to look back fondly on the men with whom I used to share life and bed. “Aramis has always been exceptional, but he and I are not tethered to each other in the same way as you and he are.”

He shook his head, and his eyes darkened as sadness welled up from within that ancient soul of his. “Our bond has been severed, Marie. He left me too.”

“He came back.”

“Not this time.”

I raised myself on my elbow and looked down at him. “He left again? Why?”

“To fuck your cousin, apparently.” Athos snorted with mirthless laughter. “I was stupid. I hadn’t thought-” He glanced up at me and curled a lock of my hair around his finger. “He smelled you, here.”

“In your bed?”

“On my sheets. Truth be told, I believe he didn’t even have to smell the sheets, he knew you had been here the moment he set foot in the house.”

“Of course. I should have thought of it. I am sorry that our affair led to a rupture between you and Aramis. Truly.”

“What about you and Aramis?”

I shrugged. “Aramis comes and goes as he pleases. And so do I. You…” I traced the line of his temple and cheekbone with my finger. “You are eternal.”

“What if he never comes back?”

“You will have to go after him.”

“I meant to you. What if he never comes back to you?”

“I am used to mourning the loss of a lover.”

“Is your heart truly so hardened, Marie?”

“What would you have me do? I’m not like you. You are like an oak, firm and everlasting. I imagine time has no meaning for you and humans flash past before you can get attached. I’m cyclical, like the moon and the tide. I live the life of a human, again and again. I get attached like a human and I feel loss like a human. But were I to grieve each single loss, I would have to throw myself into the Loire and turn back to water for all eternity.”

“What, then, is Aramis?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s new. He’s different. He’s an enigma, Athos.”

“And you would have me solve that enigma for you?”

“If you would be so kind. I believe that is a quest worthy of a cavalier and a Hellenic hero.”

He cupped my face in turn and traced my mouth with his thumb. “You are quite the enigma, too. Are you truly sending your current lover after an old lover?”

“It is for a good cause.”

“For your own secret one, no doubt.”

“Not _that_ secret.” I laughed again and pressed my hips into his. He was no longer as hard as before, but his cock twitched within his breeches as I rubbed myself against him.

“You cock-hungry Jezebel!” Athos had started to laugh, too. He grabbed my shoulders and rolled us both over until I was again spread on my back beneath him. “Are political intrigues not enough? Do you have to scheme amorous cabals as well?”

“But M. le comte!” I gasped between peals of laughter, for he had picked up my fan again and was tickling the delicate skin of my neck. “I believe it’s obvious that it’s not your _cock_ that quenches my craving.”

“What, then?” he breathed hotly against my cheek, screwing himself deeply into the crevice between my thighs.

“Your mouth.”

His mouth hovered above mine, and for the span of a breath, I expected he’d kiss me, curse and gods be damned. But he resisted, pulled himself to his hands and knees and began to make his way down my body. His hair trailed over my exposed décolleté, his teeth grazed sharply over the ridges of my corset, and his hands were pulling me up, towards him, into the heat of him. A sharp sting as he bit the top of my thigh, pushing his thumbs under the rim of my corset to hold me in place as my body swelled towards him. He nosed at the fabric of my chemise and I felt him hum into my flesh. “So wet, Marie…” For a breathless moment, his tongue pressed against me and then he tugged at the material with his teeth to smooth it where it clung to me between my legs. I angled my hips into the heat and pressure of his mouth, fumbling for a pillow to push under my pelvis.

“What did you expect?” I weaved my fingers through his hair. “I am water.”

“Oh, you are much more than that.” Athos rubbed his cheek against my thigh. “A force of nature.” The low thrum of his voice sent ripples through my whole body and I moaned as his mouth and tongue continued their exploration. With the fabric between us, the act was almost more intimate, for it forced Athos to press his entire mouth, his face against my cunt, rather than just pushing his tongue in. His teeth grazed teasingly over the drenched material, and the sparks that erupted there sent thrills all the way to my fingers and toes. My hands and feet were getting numb as all heat flooded to the spots where Athos was touching me. A flick of his tongue, and another one, and I was lost, plummeting towards release as my thighs convulsed around him. He opened his mouth voraciously, drinking me in as a tidal wave crashed over me. My legs were still shaking when his mouth released me with one last long slide of his tongue, and he crawled back up again, his cock hard and insistent against my stomach. I opened my eyes and the sight of his wet mouth sent a renewed throb through me.

Athos picked up my fan and placed it delicately over my face. Though the barrier of feathers, I felt his breath, I smelled my own scent as he brushed his parted lips over mine – an ephemeral caress, like the wing of an Anemos.

“Athos,” I sighed, stretching out beneath him, wrapping my arms and legs around him to feel his weight as he balanced atop me, mindful not to crush me. “You truly are a god amongst men.”

“Merely a demigod, Madame.”

“I believe there is nothing ‘demi’ about you.” I pressed my groin into his cock to emphasise my point. “You are one of the few lucky men who didn’t require an exaggerated codpiece one hundred years ago.”

“One hundred years ago, I was trapped under the sea.”

“Two hundred years ago, then.” I toyed with a lock of his hair. “I take it you wore one?”

“Aramis certainly did.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed dramatically. “Despite your protestations - you do wish to talk about Aramis in moments of tender intimacy.”

He smiled. “Aramis is never far from either of our thoughts when we are together, Madame.” He shifted in my embrace and settled deeper between my legs, pushing them apart with his knee. “Did you see him in Paris?”

“No.”

“It was not Aramis then who was involved in the affair that drove you out of Paris and to Bragelonne?”

“Not Aramis. The duke de Beaufort,” I said. “He was thrown into the prison at Vincennes.”

“And a similar fate awaits you?”

“Perhaps even the block,” I said.

“Will you be safe?” He brushed a lock of hair off my forehead. “I would gladly offer you hospitality here, but if they tracked you down – well, I fear Grimaud would not be able to kill them all. And Aramis isn’t here.”

“Don’t worry about me, count. I will find my way to-” I broke off and smiled. “I’m not going to tell you where I am going. For your sake, not mine.”

“And what did the duke de Beaufort do to get himself thrown in Vincennes?” he asked.

“A failed plot to assassinate Mazarin,” I pouted.

“ _Il stronzo?_ ” The demigod’s disgust with his Eminence was evident. I laughed and nodded, grinding down against his tumescence. “Well, now I believe you that Aramis wasn’t involved. He wouldn’t have failed.”

“So you _will_ go after him?”

“To prison?”

“No,” I laughed, “not Beaufort. Although I’m sure you’d love nothing more. I’ve heard all about your love of imprisonment.”

“Aramis, then?” He frowned and once more I traced his brows with my fingertips. “For you, Madame, to Tartarus and back.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Noisy-le-Sec, September 1643**

The convent at Noisy-le-Sec loomed before me like an imposing fortress. High walls, sturdy enough to keep the Devil Himself out. Somewhere, beyond that wall, the Wallachian chyortik built his nesting place. I walked around the armaments of Aramis’ Lord, skirting the chapel and the shed, passing rows of tall maples, until I found a façade with windows. It was past ten in the evening, the sun had long set, and the Jesuit brothers were all asleep, dreaming, no doubt, of their salvation.

His window was easy enough to find, even without my ever having been to Noisy before: it was the only window with the light on. I stood beneath the canopy of maples and looked up into the glowing eye of the shuttered orifice. A long time ago, I remembered, he would have sensed me and come for me. A cloud passed over my thoughts as they turned to a fateful day fifteen years ago when he did not. I picked up a small stone from under my feet and was about to fling it up to his window, when the panes creaked open and the glass parted, revealing Aramis’ silhouette backlit by the candlelight.

He stood in the aperture, not leaning forward, not looking about, but I imagined his bat-eyes were seeking me out in the darkness and his bloodhound nostrils must have already picked up my scent. Had Porthos been right? Was there something inherently sinister in Aramis now that wasn’t there before? Did I refuse to see it?

 _What am I doing here,_ I thought, and took a step out from under the canopy of leaves. Porthos’ Auntie Selene cast a soft glow onto the path, and her silver touch felt both comforting and accusatory at once.

Even in the darkness of the night, I felt our eyes meet and then, with a singularly swift movement that only he was capable of, Aramis grabbed for something and tossed it out the window. The thing unfurled into a long, sturdy, rope ladder. I raised my eyebrows in a silent query, but he merely shrugged and turned away from the window.

I ascended up the wall and crawled into his room like a thief in the night, or rather like a creature of darkness myself. I wondered why he even kept a rope ladder, for I had very clear recollection of Aramis’ ability to climb the sheer wall without any assistance.

“Pull the ladder up,” he said, his back still turned to me. 

I did as I was told, taking the opportunity to admire his chamber while he was not watching me. It was splendidly put together, from the rich, damask hangings, to the beautifully embroidered bed coverings. Portraits of three cardinals and an Archbishop decorated his walls, although I could not quite figure out what the four men had in common that would have merited such esteem. One of the depicted clerics was Richelieu. 

The room held the familiar scent of his favorite almond paste, which still could not quite cover the hidden scent of the Garonne or Adour waters (I never could keep track of all the southern rivers). Surely, he did not have his Bourbon nymph ascend into this Paradise on a rope ladder. I pulled the secret stairway in and tossed it to the floor by the window.

He stood by a small dressing table, his eyes doggedly fixed on his collection of useless cosmetic products. I was convinced that if he one day decided to stop using them at all, he would remain as immaculate on the outside as ever, although I could only imagine the pangs of grief foregoing such vanities would cause him on the inside.

It appeared that it was up to me, then, to speak. Standing there, in his convent, watching his slightly stooping posture as he turned from me, I felt the press of that cloud again. I had an elephant’s memory. There were things I wished I had never remembered when I returned from Elysium.

“I followed you back then too,” I said. He stirred, almost in a birdlike way, and turned towards me. 

“When?”

“To Chartres,” I replied, my words falling like anvil weights between us.

“Chartres,” his lips trembled. “That’s where you...”

“That’s why I was there.”

“You followed me,” he repeated, his brows furrowing and unfurrowing with the dawning of understanding. “You _found_ me.”

I looked at him, the silence between us thickening the air, until I thought I might have trouble breathing.

“You came to kill me,” he whispered, understanding at last. 

“I could not.” I swallowed but my saliva felt like broken glass. Even fifteen years later, the memory of that dagger clasped in my hand tormented me. “I chose not to.”

“Have you come to kill me _now_?” he asked, lifting one of his eyebrows as his eyes darted around the room, seeking the nearest escape route.

I closed my eyes and counted to five before opening them again. I was relieved to find him still there. Waiting, watching, thinking so loudly that I could practically hear the din of his thoughts.

“I was in the grips of madness back then, and I still could not do it. What makes you think I would do so now?” I wondered.

His face appeared to tremble, his eyelids twitched and his lips pressed into a thin line. But a moment later, the mask of detachment had been reassembled, and he asked, “Then what brings you here?”

I sighed and took a step towards him. His body twisted away from me, and I was presented with the back of his dressing gown again. Like the rest of his rooms, it too was richly put together. Despite my intentions, which were only to make amends, I could not help but imagine how that material would feel against his naked skin. Whether it trapped his body heat within its folds or left him cool and unencumbered. I placed my hand on the robe’s belt and pulled him towards me gently, until I could rest my chin on the slender bone of his shoulder.

“I understand why you were angry,” I whispered. “I think.”

“Do you?”

He leaned back against my chest, his body still coiled and ready to strike despite this deceptive motion of surrender.

“You are often quick to anger when you think I’m being reckless and putting myself in danger,” I muttered, letting my hands take hold of his waist. He looked… delectable that last night in Bragelonne, but there in Noisy, at that moment, when I had caught him unawares, without the help of his powders and creams… he was magical. “But do you really think storming off to screw Marie’s rival is the mature solution to our problems?”

“What I do with Anne-Geneviève has nothing to do with you. Or _her_.”

“So you’re not doing it to get back at Marie?”

“If you’ve come to defend your new mistress’ honor, I’d prefer it if we settled it with sword in hand.” He tried to pull away from me, but instead I reeled him back in and, sweeping away his hair, pressed my lips to the jut of his top vertebra, right at the base of his neck. “Athos, that’s not fair,” he whimpered, falling back against me as I mouthed at his skin. 

“I’m not going to fight you, Aramis,” I whispered, my lips brushing the soft hairs on the nape of his long, stately neck.

“So, you won’t fight. And you haven’t come to kill me. This time.” He extricated himself from my arms and turned to face me. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“You never gave me a chance to explain,” I sighed and let my arms drop. I wanted to keep touching him, but the feel of his skin clouded my judgement as surely as the taste of my blood clouded his in my previous life.

“To explain what? How you and Marie managed to fuck? In graphic detail? No thank you.”

“You know, Aramis,” I started to say and then chuckled. He looked very close to attempting to eat me. “The thing is, you and I… Well… I don’t quite know what to say. Except that I hated her back then. She stood between us like a wall and separated us more surely than the sea.”

“That isn’t true,” he hissed through his teeth and for a moment I got a glimpse of the hidden pain that he went out of his way to cover up in my presence. I felt a stab of guilt and reached out for him again, but he slapped my hand away, and rightly so. “The _curse_ separated us, not Marie. She didn’t need to separate us. She… she _wanted_ us to be together.”

“You’re right. I understand that. _Now_.”

“Congratulations,” he sneered. “I’m so happy for you both. And your _parrot_.”

“No, you don’t understand what I’m saying.” I scratched my head because, in all honesty, I wasn’t sure that I was conveying my thoughts to him properly, such as they were - a maelstrom of confusion. “She was this spectral threat before. And now she’s not. In a strange way, I feel… I feel closer to you when I’m with her. I… I know that sounds mad.” Aramis’ eyes got wide but a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “She knew you in a way that I don’t think I ever did. And I understand now the affection you must have felt for her. And, besides, she _still_ wants us to be together. She’s not a threat; she’s an ally.”

“You finally figured that out.”

“And she’s beautiful.”

“Yes, she is that.” His mouth had blossomed like a rose into a genuine smile by then. “But are you saying that by fucking Marie, you now feel closer to me?”

“Aramis,” I placed my hand against the curve of his cheek. “I did not _actually_ fuck her.” I opened my mouth about to explain, was even contemplating taking one of his quills and drawing him a diagram, when his fingers dug into my arms and his lips pressed against mine with fevered insistence.

I shut my eyes, letting my body surrender to the kiss. I let my hands sneak into the folds of his robe and feel that indeed the material had trapped heat in there. His mouth, his skin, it all felt like water to a man wandering in the desert after all the restrictions I’ve had to put on my contact with Marie. I could never kiss her like this; I would never touch her like this. Her skin would never feel this familiar to me. Only the curves of her body and her aroma. 

“You’re thinking of her,” he said, furrowing his beautiful brows and pulling away.

“I was only thinking that she can never be you,” I confessed.

His forehead knocked against mine. “All right. Maybe you’re right. I was being a hypocrite.”

“If you could hold that thought…” I brushed his long hair back from his face and pressed my lips to the vibrating tendon of his neck, kissing a line up to his earlobe. “I’d love to discuss your hypocrisy again in a few minutes.”

“Is that all the time it’s going to take, old man? For shame.”

I pulled him closer, loosening the belt of his dressing gown completely until it hung open off his frame, and then I pushed it off his shoulders and took a step back as it fell to his feet so that I could admire him rising nakedly from the pile of his clothes like a Botticelli Venus.

“I don’t appreciate this inequity in our levels of undress,” he pointed out calmly.

“I undressed you, you come undress me. Fair is fair. That’s what this is about, right? Fairness?”

“You _sound_ like Marie now.”

“That doesn’t appear to dissuade you much,” I replied, poignantly staring at his cock as it quickly filled with blood in the cool air of his chamber.

“You really are a vile man,” he said, taking a step towards me, fingers reaching out for my doublet, buttons helpless to resist their dexterity. “You show up in my convent, in the middle of the night, and want to do unspeakable and decidedly unchristian things to me.”

“Oh, Aramis, this wouldn’t be the first time we did unchristian things in a convent. Don’t be coy.” I shrugged out of my doublet and let it fall to the floor, where my shirt quickly followed. His fingers combed through my chest hair, leaving red trails on my skin in their wake. If he still wanted my blood, his face did an excellent job masking it.

“My vow of celibacy weighs very heavily on me,” he smiled against my lips while his hands undid my breeches.

“Yes, I can tell. Let me share that weight.”

My hands slipped under the globes of his ass and I lifted him off the ground. His legs wrapped around me and I inhaled the sweet scent of his skin. I wanted to be inside him, but I knew he would not let me. Still, this was so much more than what I could afford to indulge in with Marie. For a moment, I imagined her watching us, but the feel of Aramis moaning into my mouth as he rutted up against me refocused my attention.

“Bed,” he growled, and I aimed us both for his embroidered coverlet, leaving my trousers and all thoughts of river nymphs behind, for the time being.

***

His narrow hips between my legs, hip bones digging into my thighs, and his arms thrown wide open as he clutched the bedsheets with both hands, watching me ride him slowly. When I angled my body, my cock glided over his stomach, leaving dewy traces in the fine hairs there. His own cock was bereft, for I teased it by slipping it between my legs, along the cleft of my arse, without permitting him to sheath himself inside me. Yet I was determined to make him spend himself first. The muscles in his stomach would tense and shudder, and then I would spill myself over his skin as though over the finest velvet.

“Aramis,” he whispered, and I raised my eyes to his. He was watching me, his lips parted and his eyes aglow with a preternatural gleam. He looked as if he had just descended from Olympus, his body firm beneath mine and his eyes like the stars above Litochoro. A god had entered the convent of Noisy tonight, and it was not the One God behind whose banner the Jesuits rallied. It was a god whom I alone worshipped in this world under new rule, which had banned his kind.

I leaned forward and splayed my hand over his heart. Light glinted in the emerald in my ring and he covered my hand with his, threading his fingers through mine. His other hand moved to the back of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair as he pulled me down into a kiss. He was arching into me and I shoved a leg beneath his, hooking it around his knee as he moaned into our kiss. Trapped between our bodies, my cock twitched, and I ground it into Athos’ stomach. “Oh fuck, Aramis,” he gasped and laughed shakily, scorching my mouth with his breath and his lips. “This is torture.”

“What would you have me do?” I licked across his mouth and pulled myself upright. Athos never let go of my hand as it trailed across his chest, and I lifted both to my mouth and kissed the knuckles of his fingers. With my free hand, I reached behind me and grabbed his cock, which stood hard and ready to burst, bumping against my arse when I moved. Athos hissed and bucked into my grip, forcing me to tighten my thighs around his hips as if I were riding a charging stallion.

“Finally!” he snorted, fucking himself into my fist with shallow thrusts. “I was beginning to fear your vows of chastity have erased your memory… and skills.”

I shifted atop him and rubbed myself against his groin, my legs spread wide. “I believe you’ll find me as adroit as ever, old man.” I began to ride him again, with smooth slides of my pelvis, moving my hand up and down his cock behind my back.

“You’re certainly as beautiful as ever, little chyortik,” he muttered, watching me with murky eyes. He let go of my hand and brushed his fingertips against a lock of my hair that hung before my chest. “So soft,” he continued in the same silky voice, moving his hand down my torso. “Unlike this!” His eyes flashed with heathen light and his mouth curved into the familiar smirk, half-mocking, half-tender, as he closed his fist around my cock.

“Ah!” My body jerked forward and I lost my rhythm, fumbling to get a good grip on his cock again. “Lick your palm,” I whispered. “Please.”

He obeyed with a smile, and I slid smoothly into the damp heat.

“I believe I will have to write to Marie,” I said pensively, twisting my wrist and trailing my nails down his cock to his balls.

“Will you?” Athos brushed his thumb over the tip of my cock.

“Mmh.” I leaned back and rubbed his heated flesh against the swell of my arse. “To thank her. If not for her, you wouldn’t be here, isn’t that right?”

“She asked me to come- _Ah_!” His hips jerked up and I grinned down at him, cupping his balls.

“Did she?”

“She believes we are tethered together, Aramis.” Athos’ voice was very soft.

“She’s not wrong.” I stopped moving and snaked my fingers deeper beneath his balls. “Would you rather we severed those ties?”

“No.” He angled his hips to make me slide along his body and lifted himself on his elbow. “Aramis, no. Marie has nothing to do with you. With this.” He tugged me down by my hair and kissed me.

“You believe her even though you never believed me.”

“Aramis-”

“Who would have thought the nymph would win you over. What did she do, Athos?” I dragged my nails along the sides of his cock and thrust into his grip. “Did she do this?”

“She doesn’t have a cock.”

“Not this. _This_.” My hand was around his cock again, my grip tight and firm, and he swelled in my hand. “Is that how you attempt to fool your step-mother?”

He grimaced. “Please don’t talk about her.”

“Which one?” I showed him my fangs in a grin.

His free hand had been roaming my body and stopped at my hip. “If you wish to discuss the women in our lives, Aramis,” he guided my movements and I arched my back, grinding down on him, “We can talk about the duchesse de Longueville.”

“Ah. You know about her.”

“Marie told me.”

“The _wily_ nymph.”

We laughed both, shoving our bodies into each other. Athos sat up and yanked me against his chest. Still laughing, he bit my lower lip, pushed his tongue between my teeth and fucked my mouth ferociously, until I clung to him, lightheaded and panting. His cock slipped along the cleft of my arse and Athos growled, bucked against me and spilled himself hotly over my fingers. I fucked myself into his hand and into his lap. Then his hot breath, his teeth on my neck, and he licked a long path all the way up to my ear. “Aramis,” he whispered, “So beautiful.” I groaned and bit into the hard muscle of his shoulder. The slick heat between us boiled over as my climax rolled over me and pushed me deeper into Athos’ embrace.

We lay entangled in the damp sheets and I blew gently against the hairs on his chest to see them tremble. “How, then?” I asked.

It didn’t surprise me that he understood what I meant. “We…” he laughed, “We keep our clothes on. And wear gloves. It was her idea.”

“Of course it was.” I couldn’t help smiling. Marie, shrewd, crafty Marie. It was not in the least unexpected that she would have attempted to seduce Athos when she had the chance. What was unexpected was that her success had been instantaneous and effortless. My godling, it would appear, hadn’t put up any fight at all.

“Better tell me, sweet flittermouse, whose idea was your affair with the Bourbon nymph?”

I sighed and stretched in his arms, throwing my leg over his. “The duchess is destined for greatness,” I said calmly. “You understand greatness, Athos.” I rolled my hips into him. “It is irresistible,” I purred.

“Is that her only attraction?”

“Have you never seen her?” I smiled. “Considering the latest developments, I dare say you would not find her entirely unappealing.”

“You’re not angry,” he said. “About Marie.”

I searched my heart but found it free of anger. “Not at this moment.” After a night well-spent, contentment and languor had descended over me, driving away any rage I might have otherwise felt.

“Hold on to this feeling,” he muttered into my hair and took my hand in his. “And if you ever feel angry again, come to Bragelonne. I will do my best to assuage your ire.”

I smiled into his skin. It was true, my fury evaporated the moment my body found release in his arms. Beneath me, I heard his heartbeat slow down as Hypnos crept upon him. Athos would have to leave in the morning, but for now, I wanted to keep him here with me. My beautiful idol, to whom I was tethered by bonds that had never torn, in spite of years, deaths and nymphs. Athos’ breath was low and even, and his hand twitched in mine, as if he was wrestling Morpheus in his dreams. I closed my eyes and reached out. I delved into old memories. The thud of his heart reverberated in my veins, in the very marrow of my bones. The sensation, familiar of old, was infinitely comforting. I let his heartbeat guide mine, sinking into the welcoming waters of oblivion.

***

I awoke at the crowing of a multitude of cocks. It appeared the good brothers at the convent of Noisy-le-Sec had a predilection for roosters. I stretched and cast about idly, slowly remembering where I was. I was not surprised to find the other side of the bed empty, although I felt a memory of the weight of him in my limbs. Did he sleep in the same bed with me, with his head resting upon my chest again, or was my body merely responding to an echo from many years ago?

I opened my eyes, and saw Aramis sitting on the window ledge, looking out at the first rays of aurora. His hair had been neatly combed and the same dressing gown that had fallen to the floor the night before now fell gently off his shoulder, exposing his skin to the first morning kiss of Helios. I smiled, thinking of how very like him it was to skip the _matins_ , and lay there watching him, unobserved, beneath the warmth of his embroidered counterpane.

In the three millennia that I had been in existence, I have had my heart broken exactly three times. The first time was with a man whose face and name had been forgotten by time and history (though not by me). He was just an ephebe when we met. He was the first one to show me the true consequences of Hera’s curse. I did not know before him that a heart could break, truly break, the way it broke inside me on the day he told me he could no longer stand to look at me. My perpetual youth was an increasing insult to him with each passing day. Each wrinkle, each age spot, each ache and pain in his body, it only made him hate me more. I thought that by staying with him, I was doing him a kindness, that observing his suffering, those ravages of time, somehow made my own love stronger, deeper. Was I wrong? Perhaps I was. His love had turned to acid inside him and I died in my Grigori’s arms that very night.

I did better after that. I broke others rather than allow myself to be broken. I took what I wanted and I moved along. My mortal family was gone, as was everyone else who would have known me at Troy. There was no one out there who made me want to be a better man anymore. Until, of course, I met Alexander of Macedon, many centuries later. Everyone loved Alexander, and none of us thought he would ever die. For how could the Gods allow such a thing to happen? He was Megas Alexandros. He was Helios, Apollo, and Ares, all rolled into one, but in a mortal coil. I did not think that it would kill me, my love for him, for it was not a jealous love: we all shared him happily, we all understood you could not tether to sun to just one human for his entire life. But then I watched him grieve for Hephaistion and I felt the first strings of my heart begin to snap. We could all feel it. The beautiful Bagoas, the wild Barsine, the stately Stateira, and the rest of them, the lovers and the vultures alike. They all knew, the sun was setting. Alexander’s death broke my heart as surely as if he had told me to go himself, for I could not fathom living in a world without him.

My first two deaths had caused me pain. But neither of them hurt as much as Aramis had hurt me. The horror of those days, no matter how much I tried to emotionally detach from them, was fresh in my mind still. Because… because _I did not know why_. I did not know why it happened, why he left. Back on that ship from Litochoro, I told him that I understood why he had to go, but I had said that knowing that I was speaking from a place of power again. I pitied him because he had come back to me, he had been tricked into bringing me back to life, only to find me bereft of that feeling that held me to him before, for centuries. I told him that I understood, but sometimes, in moments of exquisite darkness, I found myself screaming internally at that lie. There was a part of me (some might say a human part, but I had known gods to be just as cruel and petty) that _rejoiced_ in his pain. A part that wanted him to hurt, to suffer like I had suffered.

Because I did. He had left me without a word, taking my blood and my life with him. I had never told him of the consequences of doing such a thing because I had never wanted him to carry that burden. Then why, _why_ did I blame him for it? Why now, why still, when I no longer even loved him?

I could no longer love him. Aramis was the very embodiment of _dukkha_. I wanted him, but being with him did not make me happy. My past love for him had been an addiction. Just like with Alexander, I could not imagine living in a world without him.

I could not allow myself to feel that way again. As long as he was my addiction, I would never escape _samsara_. If I let him, he would destroy me again.

“You’re creeping me out, old man,” his voice brought me out of my own head. “Are you practicing some sort of an open-eyed meditation or are you just staring at me because you cannot look your fill?”

I smiled and opened my mouth to speak but the appropriately witty repartee did not immediately alight upon my tongue.

“I was thinking of _dukkha_ ,” I replied, “and how it is caused by always craving that which we cannot have.”

“What if you _could_ have it?” he asked, his eyes casting off a soft glow. I wondered if he understood what I had really meant without saying it.

“I suppose I would be happy for a while. Until…”

“Until?”

“Nothing lasts forever. Not even me,” I replied, smiling at him sadly.

He turned his head away, looking out the window as if he found the accustomed view incredibly interesting.

“I suppose I’m leaving the way I came in,” I said, pulling on my discarded clothes and padding on over to his side. I stood toeing at the rope ladder at his feet. He leaned into me and I placed my arms around him, my lips pressed against his hair as I inhaled his scent again. _Dukkha,_ I reminded myself.

“I can get you the gardener’s ladder, if your legs aren’t sturdy enough right now to climb the rope,” he needled me.

“I am not using the gardener’s ladder, like some nymph,” I laughed pressing a parting kiss to his earlobe. His own body trembled with laughter against me. “You will come to Bragelonne again?” 

His hand held on to mine briefly. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he lept off the windowsill and pressed his lips to mine in a quick caress.

“An army of Grimaud’s Antinoi could not keep me away.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” I replied, laughing.

“He might view it as a challenge,” he pointed out, laughing in turn.

“He needs a challenge. Country life has made him soft.”

He tossed the rope ladder from the window and we both hovered by the windowsill in companionable proximity.

“Your hat,” he said. I had forgotten I had been wearing one the night before. I was also having trouble remembering where I had stabled my horse for the night.

“I should go,” I muttered.

“You should. This isn’t Mount You; my convent is replete with pious brethren who would be scandalized to find you in my chambers.”

I was glad he seemed so predisposed to jesting. It made all the unpleasantness that passed feel more in the past, where it belonged. 

“Farewell, sweet flittermouse,” I said, swinging my legs over the ledge and taking hold of the rope. He made the sign of the cross over me as I began to descend and I saw the pearls of his fangs flash while he shook with silent laughter.

I found Grimaud and the horses already waiting by the wall of the convent.

“Aramis sends his regards,” I smirked.

“At least he doesn’t have a vagina,” my Grigori mumbled with feigned indifference.

When I was finally back in the saddle again, we headed northeast, towards Villers-Cotterêts, rather than heading back towards Blois. I figured, Porthos would appreciate knowing that for the time being, and for all intents and purposes, Aramis and I were at least friends again.


End file.
